The COVID-19 pandemic has increasingly been defined as the shecession for its disproportionate debilitating impact on women. Despite this gendered analysis, a number of health activists have called on governments to account for the experiences of Black communities as they are disproportionately suffering the effects of this pandemic. In the media’s address of the impact of the pandemic, we ask, what experiences are represented in news stories and are Black women present in these representations. Performing a content analysis of 108 news articles, a reading of media discourses through a racial lens reveals a homogenization of women’s experiences and an absence of the Black experience. In the small number of news stories that do focus on Black women, we see that the health disparities are not simply the result of precarious work and living conditions, but also the struggle against anti-Black racism on multiple fronts. In critiquing, however, we also bring forth the small number of news stories on the Black experience that speak to the desire and hope that can thrive outside of white supremacist structures.

White supremacist ideology is the elephant in the social work classroom, negatively impacting educators’ abilities to facilitate discussion and learning. One of the most effective ways to dismantle and organize against white supremacy is to politicize the seemingly benign moments that occur in the classroom that can create discomfort for students and instructors. Politicization includes identifying and addressing both the racial (micro-) aggressions that occur in the classroom and the processes and institutional policies that create complacency and lull us to sleep. In this conceptual piece, we use a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework to understand how white supremacy perpetuates itself in the classroom, with a particular focus on whiteness as property. As well, we explore what it means to decolonize the classroom. Using a vignette based on our teaching experiences, we use these two frameworks to analyze classroom dynamics and interactions, and discuss how implications for social work education include waking from the metaphorical sleep to recognize the pernicious effects of whiteness and white supremacy. Included are practical individual teaching, relational, and systemic suggestions to enact change.